User Reviews

THE DARK hits a nerve as it starts with a couple of bogeymen standing at the stairs of a young child's bedroom one night . I think I speak for everyone who's seen QUATERMASS , DOCTOR WHO or THE X-FILES as a child when I say the scariest place in the world is a bedroom coupled with an overactive imagination . Nostalgia strikes home even more when one of the bogeymen mentions toilet training and " A cold clammy hand on a buttock " ! As a child I often feared that we'd be taken over by an invasion of Sea Devils using a toilet as their bridgehead . Even now I still have panic attacks whenever I hear someone play a stylophone

Unfortunately THE DARK fails to keep up this narrative momentum as the bogeymen depart to a monster club and make small talk . But this is an animated short film which means the animation is probably the most important thing and in that case I was impressed and I'm slightly puzzled as to why it hasn't a better average rating

As a child lies in bed in the dark he hears creaking floorboards and thinks that monsters are trying to get in his door to get him. He is right of course, but in this case the monster is an old hand, training up a new monster to take over from him. The job has gotten too modern and fangled for him and he prefers the company of the other old-timers in his local pub – reminiscing about the past and complaining about the present.

This film starts out with a style and approach similar to the short film Sandman (although not as impressive) and I figured this was what I was going to get. However seconds later the monsters speak and we find that one is an older man, keen on the old-school ways whereas the other is a younger man, keen to use technology to frighten when he can. This contrast provides plenty of funny (if easy) moments within a film that plays on these characters well. Set in a pub around a normal professional the dialogue would not be funny but the idea of all these old monster figures having that attitude is consistently amusing.

The animation may not be as polished as Sandman but it still looks good and has a nice rough charm about it. The wolfman bit impressed me no end and mostly it fits the comic tone of the film well. The voice talent is good and everyone fits their characters well – most notably the lead pair. Overall this is a funny short that plays well on a common dynamic in the workplace but uses monsters – it sounds simple enough because it is, but it is well delivered and worth seeing.